1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
2 see. It is written in the POD format (see perlpod manpage) which is
3 specially designed to be readable as is.
7 perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS (possibly very outdated information)
11 NOTE: The following information is highly unlikely to be correct.
12 A recent version of perl for the Amiga can be found at the Aminet site:
14 http://us.aminet.net/aminet/dirs/dev_gg.html
16 One can read this document in the following formats:
19 multiview perlamiga.guide
21 to list some (not all may be available simultaneously), or it may
22 be read I<as is>: either as F<README.amiga>, or F<pod/perlamiga.pod>.
28 perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS
34 - Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS
35 - Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS
37 Accessing documentation
44 - Getting the perl source
45 - Application of the patches
48 - Installing the built perl
58 =item B<Unix emulation for AmigaOS: ixemul.library>
60 You need the Unix emulation for AmigaOS, whose most important part is
61 B<ixemul.library>. For a minimum setup, get the following archives from
62 the Aminet archives (http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/):
68 Note that there might be newer versions available by the time you read
71 Note also that this is a minimum setup; you might want to add other
72 packages of B<ADE> (the I<Amiga Developers Environment>).
74 =item B<Version of Amiga OS>
76 You need at the very least AmigaOS version 2.0. Recommended is version 3.1.
80 =head2 Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS
82 Start your Perl program F<foo> with arguments C<arg1 arg2 arg3> the
83 same way as on any other platform, by
85 perl foo arg1 arg2 arg3
87 If you want to specify perl options C<-my_opts> to the perl itself (as
88 opposed to to your program), use
90 perl -my_opts foo arg1 arg2 arg3
92 Alternately, you can try to get a replacement for the system's B<Execute>
93 command that honors the #!/usr/bin/perl syntax in scripts and set the s-Bit
94 of your scripts. Then you can invoke your scripts like under UNIX with
98 (Note that having *nixish full path to perl F</usr/bin/perl> is not
99 necessary, F<perl> would be enough, but having full path would make it
100 easier to use your script under *nix.)
102 =head2 Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS
104 Perl under AmigaOS lacks some features of perl under UNIX because of
105 deficiencies in the UNIX-emulation, most notably:
111 =item some features of the UNIX filesystem regarding link count and file dates
113 =item inplace operation (the -i switch) without backup file
115 =item umask() works, but the correct permissions are only set when the file is
122 Change to the installation directory (most probably ADE:), and
123 extract the binary distribution:
125 lha -mraxe x perl-$VERSION-bin.lha
129 tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-bin.tgz
131 (Of course you need lha or tar and gunzip for this.)
133 For installation of the Unix emulation, read the appropriate docs.
135 =head1 Accessing documentation
139 If you have C<man> installed on your system, and you installed perl
140 manpages, use something like this:
144 man ExtUtils.MakeMaker
146 to access documentation for different components of Perl. Start with
150 Note: You have to modify your man.conf file to search for manpages
151 in the /ade/lib/perl5/man/man3 directory, or the man pages for the
152 perl library will not be found.
154 Note that dot (F<.>) is used as a package separator for documentation
155 for packages, and as usual, sometimes you need to give the section - C<3>
156 above - to avoid shadowing by the I<less(1) manpage>.
161 If you have some WWW browser available, you can build B<HTML> docs.
162 Cd to directory with F<.pod> files, and do like this
164 cd /ade/lib/perl5/pod
167 After this you can direct your browser the file F<perl.html> in this
168 directory, and go ahead with reading docs.
170 Alternatively you may be able to get these docs prebuilt from C<CPAN>.
172 =head2 B<GNU> C<info> files
174 Users of C<Emacs> would appreciate it very much, especially with
175 C<CPerl> mode loaded. You need to get latest C<pod2info> from C<CPAN>,
176 or, alternately, prebuilt info pages.
180 can be constructed using C<pod2latex>.
184 Here we discuss how to build Perl under AmigaOS.
188 You need to have the latest B<ixemul> (Unix emulation for Amiga)
191 =head2 Getting the perl source
193 You can either get the latest perl-for-amiga source from Ninemoons
196 tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-src.tgz
198 or get the official source from CPAN:
200 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/5.0
204 tar xvzpf perl$VERSION.tar.gz
206 You will see a message about errors while extracting F<Configure>. This
207 is normal and expected. (There is a conflict with a similarly-named file
208 F<configure>, but it causes no harm.)
212 sh configure.gnu --prefix=/ade
224 Some tests will be skipped because they need the fork() function:
226 F<io/pipe.t>, F<op/fork.t>, F<lib/filehand.t>, F<lib/open2.t>, F<lib/open3.t>,
227 F<lib/io_pipe.t>, F<lib/io_sock.t>
229 =head2 Installing the built perl
237 Norbert Pueschel, pueschel@imsdd.meb.uni-bonn.de